'Peanuts' fans mourn death of creator Charles Schulz

Cartoonist dies on eve of his farewell comic strip

From staff and wire reports

February 13, 2000
Web posted at: 9:29 p.m. EST (0229 GMT)

In this story: Last cartoon becomes epitaph for Schulz 'Peanuts' part of popular culture Cartoon based on real life Snoopy and Red Baron brought international fame Characters appeared on countless products RELATED STORIES, SITES

SANTA ROSA, California (CNN) -- "Peanuts" fans and fellow cartoonists are mourning the death of Charles Schulz, the beloved artist who gave us Charlie Brown, Lucy, Linus and Snoopy and made phrases like "good grief" and "security blanket" famous.

VIDEO CNN's Don Knapp reports on the comic strip artist who gave us Charlie Brown, Lucy and Snoopy -- Charles Shulz, who died Saturday evening at his home in Santa Rosa, California. (February 13) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K CNN's Ann McDermott tells how Charles Schulz put his life into his work, modeling Charlie Brown on himself. Shulz died Saturday. (February 13) QuickTime Play Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K     AUDIO Cartoonist Mort Walker talks to CNN about his friend Charles Schulz 1200K/105 sec. AIFF or WAV sound Mike Luckovich, editorial cartoonist at The Atlanta Journal Constitution, remembers Charles Schulz 704K/60 sec. AIFF or WAV sound     GALLERY The view from the Peanuts gallery     MESSAGE BOARD Remembering Charles M. Schulz

Schulz created characters with all-too-human foibles -- ostensibly children -- with whom people all over the world could identify. The most widely syndicated comic strip artist in history died Saturday evening in his sleep at his home in Santa Rosa, California. He was 77.

Schulz was diagnosed with colon cancer last fall and suffered a series of small strokes during emergency abdominal surgery in November.

His son, Craig, said his father seemed fine earlier Saturday and had gone to his daughter Jill Transki's home in Santa Rosa. Only his wife, Jeannie, was with him when he died.

After his condition worsened last fall, Schulz announced his retirement. He died just hours before Sunday papers carrying his final strip were delivered.

The last daily Peanuts strip was published on January 3. But Sunday's papers carried the final cartoon, a strip showing Snoopy at his typewriter, along with other Peanuts regulars. It includes a farewell letter signed by Schulz.

"Dear Friends," the letter opens. "I have been fortunate to draw Charlie Brown and his friends for almost 50 years. It has been the fulfillment of my childhood ambition."

"It's amazing that he dies just before his last strip is published," fellow cartoonist Lynn Johnston, creator of "For Better or Worse," said. Such an ending was "as if he had written it that way."

Schulz ends his farewell letter by saying, "Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy ... how can I ever forget them ..."

Other cartoonists think it's Schulz who is unforgettable.

"In a couple of centuries, when people talk about American artists, he'll be one of the very few remembered," said longtime friend Sergio Aragones, an illustrator for Mad magazine. "And when they talk about comic strips, probably his will be the only one ever mentioned."

Schulz's work ethic and endearingly honest way with characters made him the standard by which many cartoonists measured themselves.

"Peanuts" debuted on October 2, 1950

"He worked every day. He never ran out of ideas," Aragones said. "He was a cartoonist, a true cartoonist."

Mort Walker, who draws "Beetle Bailey," said that Schulz influenced many of today's cartoonists.

"He brought a whole new attitude toward the comics," Walker said. "He brought pathos and the attitudes you know that all real children have of rejection and failure ... and he somehow made them funny."

"Peanuts" debuted on October 2, 1950. The travails of Charlie Brown, the "little round-headed kid," and his pals eventually ran in more than 2,600 newspapers, reaching millions of readers in 75 countries.

One of the strip's most endearing qualities was its constancy.

After nearly 50 years, the long-suffering Charlie Brown still faced misfortune with a mild, "Good grief!" Tart-tongued Lucy still handed out bad psychiatric advice at a nickel a pop, a joke that started as a parody of a lemonade stand. And Snoopy, Charlie Brown's wise-but-weird beagle, still took the occasional flight of fancy back to the skies of World War I and his rivalry with the Red Baron.

The strip was an intensely personal effort for Schulz. He had had a clause in his contract dictating the strip had to end with his death.

"No, the strip will never be turned over to someone else," he said.

While battling cancer, Schulz opted to retire, saying he wanted to focus on his health and family without the worry of a daily deadline.

"Why do musicians compose symphonies and poets write poems?" he once said. "They do it because life wouldn't have any meaning for them if they didn't. That's why I draw cartoons. It's my life."

Schulz was born on November 26, 1922, in St. Paul, Minnesota. He studied art after seeing an ad, "Do you like to draw?"

Many of his cartoon characters were drawn from Schulz's personal life. When he was a boy, he had a dog named Spike that Schulz called "the smartest and most uncontrollable dog that I have ever seen." Spike became the inspiration for Snoopy.

Schulz's childhood dog Spike was the inspiration for Snoopy

Schulz once told an interviewer that other members of the Peanuts gang also had real life counterparts.

"Mostly friends of mine, like my friend Charlie Brown," Schulz said. "He and I worked together at the art instruction correspondence school."

The little red-haired girl, Charlie Brown's unrequited love, was based on a girlfriend who rejected Schulz's proposal of marriage in 1950, according to his biographer, Rheta Grimsley Johnson, who wrote the 1989 book, "Good Grief: The Story of Charles M. Schulz."

"If you're going to draw a comic strip every day, you're going to have to draw on every experience in your life," Schulz once said.

He was drafted into the Army in 1943 and sent to the European theater, although he saw little combat.

After the war, he did lettering for a church comic book, taught art and sold cartoons to the Saturday Evening Post magazine. His first feature, "Li'l Folks," was developed for the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 1947. In 1950, it was sold to a syndicate and the name changed to Peanuts, a name Schulz said he didn't much like.

The popularity of the strip soared in October 1965 when Snoopy turned his doghouse into a Sopwith Camel for the first of many engagements with the Baron. The following year, a group called the Royal Guardsmen had a No. 2 single, "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron."

Although he remained largely a private person, the strip brought Schulz international fame. He won the Reuben Award, comic art's highest honor, in 1955 and 1964. In 1978, he was named International Cartoonist of the Year, an award voted by 700 comic artists around the world.

The 1965 CBS-TV special "A Charlie Brown Christmas" won an Emmy and rerun immortality, and many other specials followed.

There was a hit musical, "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown," with Gary Burghoff, later Radar O'Reilly on "M-A-S-H," playing Charlie. The book "The Gospel According to Peanuts" explored the philosophical and religious implications of the strip.

Schulz was to have been honored with a lifetime achievement award on May 27 at the National Cartoonists Society convention in New York.

The Peanuts characters have appeared on clothes, sheets, stationery and countless other products. Schulz several times was listed as one of Forbes magazine's best-paid entertainers, most recently in 1996, when his 1995-96 income was estimated at $33 million, ranking him 30th on the magazine's list.

In 1990, when the Peanuts gang turned 40, the government of France named Schulz a Commander of Arts and Letters, one of that country's highest awards for excellence in the arts.

Despite the success, Schulz struggled with depression and anxiety.

"He worries a lot, he has anxieties," said Gaye LeBaron with the Santa Rosa Press Democrat before Schulz's death. "It's been his whole life."

But the struggle only improved Schulz's work, as he poured his feelings of rejection and uncertainty into the strip and turned Charlie Brown into Everyman.

"He was Charlie Brown," said Walker.

Correspondents Anne McDermott, Charles Knapp and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Charles Schulz puts down his pen
January 3, 2000
Say it ain't so! Schulz to retire 'Peanuts'
December 14, 1999
'Peanuts' creator suffering cancer
November 22, 1999

The Official Peanuts Website
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